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Overview
The University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) website, UCO.edu, serves as a virtual front door to some of our most important stakeholders including prospective students and their parents, civic and business leaders and the Oklahoma City metropolitan community. In a competitive market with limited resources, it is more important than ever that the website serves as a useful tool in communicating the university’s value and distinct market position. The site’s visitors should find what they seek with ease within a functional, visually appealing design that reflects UCO’s position as Oklahoma’s Metropolitan University. As such, University Communications (UC) has partnered with the Office of Information Technology (OIT) to redesign, restructure and reimagine the university’s web presence. This project has produced a website that looks and feels like the UCO brand with an architecture driven by its primary users – the aforementioned stakeholders.
It is increasingly important to protect the integrity of the site design and keep information current, accurate and true to the UCO brand. Both to maintain the consistency and cohesiveness of the new site with UCO graphic and brand standards and follow best practices for web management, UC and OIT have established a Web Content Team (WCT) – a group of trained and trusted individuals empowered to contribute and manage university website content.
OIT Web Services
The OIT Web Services group will administer the WCMS, develop templates, maintain website software, ensure website folder structure conforms to guidelines set by University Communications, provide customer support, training development/delivery and end-user leadership in web best-practices. Training includes, but is not limited to, web accessibility and utilization of the WCMS to provide basic web services to the campus.
Additionally, the Web Services group in partnership with University Communications will provide and manage facilitation of customer meetings to develop an ongoing content strategy, adherence to UCO style guide including maintaining UCO styles and logos, web accessibility, consistency of images and documents, and addressing/avoidance of copyright issues.
College & Division Content Administrators
Comprising individuals designated by each college and division, the College & Division Content Administrators will receive training delivered by OIT and UC. Power users will be trained individuals demonstrating experience, skill, and mastery of the WCMS and possessing a strong understanding of web best practices. They will be responsible for editing all web content within their College or Division UCO website, from the highest level down and will be accountable for reviewing and publishing all content for their College or Division to the UCO website.
The number of power users per web space (college or division site) shall be limited to no more than 2 individuals. College and division content administrators must meet specific criteria including but not limited to:
- Being designated as one of the 1 or 2 individuals authorized to make web content updates for their represented unit
- Possessing experience in the use of the WCMS
- Publishing all content, which prior to being published, will follow a series of approvals (aka “workflow”)
- Participating in Web Content Team Meetings which may include additional training sessions
Summary
By establishing a dedicated team of individuals focused on consistent delivery of web content to meet the new structure and the UCO Graphics Standards Guide, UCO will ensure the integrity of the web presence is preserved.